On Friday, April 14th Alexander Hedglen went from learner to master. Passing his PhD defense, he will go on to work for Northrop Grumman Corp in Rolling Meadows, IL. Alex has been the top optomechanical student for XWCL for the past six years! His projects range from designing telescope simulators to 3″ triplets to crazy mounting schemes for deformable mirrors.
Alex and I started working for Laird back in 2017. I will greatly miss his mentorship and guidance. We have spent long hours in the lab aligning optics, gluing optics, and phasing the GMT segments on HCAT. He has taught me so much about optomechanical engineering and how to make some darn good presentation figures.
We wish Alex, Kateri, Ezra, Clover, and Callie the best of luck on their journey!
Alex and me working on phasing the High Contrast Adaptive-optics Testbed (HCAT)